The Notorious Mrs. Wright

I sagged against the door, unsure of what to do. If I helped Ray, at least me and J.T. would get a decent meal out of him for once.

But I’d hate myself, too. I always did.

Then again, I had to think of Mama, suffering in that tiny basement apartment with its peeling paint and leaking pipes. We shared the floor with the building’s ancient furnace and the coal pile. The heat went up. The dust came down.

If I could scam more cash than Ray needed to buy groceries and pay the worst of the bills, Mama might give in and get some medicine for the hurting in her chest.

J.T. slipped his hand in mine and gave it a little squeeze, his way of letting me know he understood the fight going on inside me and whatever I decided was fine with him. My brother can be a jerk sometimes, but mostly he’s pretty great.

“Okay, I’ll pull the stupid drop,” I told Ray with a hard look. I forced him to give one of his tens and swear to use the other to feed J.T. at the restaurant.

“Twenty minutes after we go in, you come,” he reminded me as we got out of the car and headed south on foot. “I need time to pick us one.” A mark, he meant. Some traveler in an expensive suit or an out-of-town businessman we could fleece for whatever money and jewelry he had on him.

As we walked, we left behind most of the run-down buildings. Two blocks over, we came to Public Square and found it packed with people—mamas and daddies shopping or who’d brought their kids to see the Christmas decorations. Higbee’s and May’s department stores had tried to outdo each other with wreaths and bows and lights. Red, green and blue bulbs even glowed from the leafless branches of the trees.

“Look!” J.T. said, pointing. He ran about laughing, taking in all the sights. A fake gingerbread house stood in one part of the square. In another was a manger scene. Music spilled out every time a door was opened.

For a few seconds I let myself believe we were a family and that Ray had brought us to see the animated figures in Higbee’s windows. Stupid. But I couldn’t help it. Those Christmas carols fried my brain, I guess.

I stopped and gazed at the fragrance rings on display at a boutique. Big and gaudy, they had a fake “jewel” that opened, and inside they held a soft wax perfume you could rub with your finger and dab on. All the girls at school had one. I thought they were about the neatest things I’d ever seen.

“Pretty,” Ray said, coming up beside me.

“Pretty hokey,” I said, as if I wouldn’t wear something like that in a million years.

Lesson Number One in Emma Webster’s Book of Survival: never let Ray know what you like or don’t like. If he knows you, he can hurt you. That’s why the Emma he sees isn’t real. She’s a character, like all the others I’ve created.

Ray handed over a small sack, one of the props I’d need, and I stuck it into a pocket I’d sewn into the inside of my coat. He’d chosen to play the game at The French Connection, a restaurant inside a ritzy hotel called Stouffer’s Inn on the Square. Ahead of us, the hotel rose up like a sideways E and seemed to disappear into the clouds.

“You remember the number where Vinnie’s at?” Ray asked me. I nodded. “Don’t let the mark get too good a look at the real number on the receipt or we’re sunk.”

“I won’t.” I’ve pulled this at least ten times, although never here. The scam’s a basic pigeon drop, but my disguise gives it an Emma Webster twist.

In my head I rehearse what I have to do. After I sit down in the restaurant, I wait until no waiters are around, then slip the sack out of my coat and pretend to find it where it might’ve been overlooked for a few days by the cleaning staff—pushed down in the seat cushion of the booth, behind a plant or trapped by a table leg…something that fits the layout and feels right. That part I play by ear.

Inside is a box wrapped in fancy paper and a sales receipt for a $15,000 bracelet from Cowell and Hubbard. Funny that nobody ever wants to open the box and see what’s really inside, but Ray says that’s why they deserve to get bilked. Eight hundred years this swindle’s been around, and dumb smucks still fall for it every day.

Then I show the box and the receipt to Ray and the mark and ask them what to do. Ray pooh-poohs telling the restaurant manager, if that’s what the mark suggests. Call the jewelry store first, he says. Report the package found.

I ask for a phone to be brought to my table. I pretend to call the store and identify myself as Mrs. Wilbur Abercrombie. What I do instead is dial Vinnie.

When I say I’ve found the bracelet, I’m supposedly told the owner has authorized a $1,000 reward for its return. Being an old lady, I get shaky at hearing that. I hand the receiver to the mark to get the information. Vinnie repeats the stuff about the reward. The store will pay it when the bracelet’s returned, Vinnie tells him.

I do a real acting job here. I fan my face and pat my heart. Such a large amount, I say. Oh, my! Since I have arthritis in my hip and can’t walk too well, would one of them return the bracelet? I’ll split the reward with him.

Ray quickly says he will.

But, I point out, I’m trusting a stranger with an expensive piece of jewelry, and I’ve given my name to the store owner. If the bracelet should disappear, wouldn’t I be in trouble?

As a show of good faith, Ray offers to give me his wallet to hold while he’s gone. He takes it out and opens it, then fakes embarrassment. He’s low on cash, he explains. The wife’s taken his money and credit cards and gone shopping. He doesn’t even have his driver’s license on him. He left it in his hotel room.

The mark always jumps in at this point and offers to return the bracelet, seeing his chance to make a quick $500 and cut Ray out of the deal. Ray congratulates us on our good fortune and splits. He does that because being alone with me makes the mark feel okay about leaving his goodies behind. No old lady is going to rip him off, right?

The mark hands over his wallet for me to hold. He leaves with the package. In the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes him to walk to the store and realize he’s been scammed, we’re all long gone in the other direction—with his dough.

Bait, hook, reel in. Disappear clean. That’s how it works. At least it does when Ray takes time to plan the sting properly and scout out the right mark.

This day, though, I felt uneasy. Quick stings with random victims were risky.

“This is it for me,” I told Ray as we came to the hotel. “I’m not helping you again. You’ve got to give up griftin’.”

“Straight life and me don’t get along too good.”

“I know, but you’ve got to try.”

“I will, Princess. Honest. When I hit it big I’ll retire and…”

He went on and on about everything he planned to get me when that happened—nice clothes, a big house, my own car. I stopped listening. I wanted so much to say what was in my heart, to admit I was ashamed to be his daughter. But I couldn’t.

I hate Ray. I mean it. I really do hate him. The problem is…I love him a little bit, too. And that makes me not want to hurt him, even with words.

“Let’s just do this,” I said, cutting him off.

We rounded up my reluctant brother and they left me outside the hotel. As planned, I waited twenty minutes, then hobbled into the lobby on my cane. Wonder replaced my uneasiness. I had to clamp my mouth shut before my false teeth fell out. I’d never seen such a place—marble walls trimmed in gold…curtains the color of wine…arches shooting up two full stories.

A grand staircase led to a huge fountain. Around it people sat on overstuffed couches listening to a man playing a piano and a woman a harp. A sign read that high tea would be served at four. I didn’t know what that was exactly, but it sounded elegant.

I took a hard left down the hall to the restaurant. A guy with a fancy suit and an even fancier accent led me across carpet that was so thick we didn’t make noise when we walked. He asked me where I’d like to sit.

“Over there would be lovely,” I answered, pointing to a spot near Ray and J.T. Ray drank coffee and talked with a bald man at a nearby table while J.T. wolfed down a sandwich. With a scratch of his chin, Ray let me know Baldy was my target.

A waiter wearing white gloves helped me sit. I took off my coat and placed it next to me, then nodded to Ray and the mark. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” they both said.

Opening the menu, the part of me that’s most like Ray came out, skipping the meat and the vegetables and everything practical and going straight for the desserts. I ordered a cup of tea and something called crème brûlée—warm custard with a browned spun-sugar glaze and raspberries. The waiter served it in a delicate china dish with a silver spoon. Heaven.

At that moment, surrounded by those pretty things, I was as happy as I’d ever been. I felt…I don’t know. I can’t say important, because that’s not it. But maybe, for once, I felt not worthless.

I could have stayed there forever but, of course, I was only halfway through eating when Ray signaled me to hurry up. Cursing silently, I put down my spoon and made the drop. Baldy took the bait. I set the hook and reeled him in. When Ray and J.T. left me alone with him, I got his goodies: six hundred in cash and two credit cards.

But then, everything fell apart. Baldy got suspicious. Or maybe he wasn’t so dumb. He had a friend with him, he said, another engineer in town for a convention. Why didn’t he call the room and have his friend come down and keep me company while he returned the bracelet? I smiled and said the only thing I could— “A grand idea.”

Baldy called Friend. Friend came down and Baldy whispered something to him I couldn’t hear. Baldy paid his bill and left with the package. I figured…fifteen minutes. That’s all the time I had to get away, and Baldy had probably told Friend not to let me out of his sight.

I laid my ten on top of my lunch bill, where the waiter would find it. Skipping out on the ticket and having the management after me wouldn’t be very smart right now. I told Friend I needed to be excused. “Ladies’ room,” I said. As expected, he popped to his feet to escort me. I acted flattered. “What a sweet boy you are.”

The bathrooms, I remembered, were between the restaurant and the lobby. I held on to Friend’s arm with one hand and my cane with the other. Slowly I hobbled down the corridor with him. Coming in, the walk had seemed short. Now it felt five miles long. The minutes ticked by. Sweat trickled down between my breasts.